1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a portable radio apparatus for receiving and displaying message information transmitted by a wireless system, and also to an information processing system used for this portable radio apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
As a portable radio apparatus equipped with such a function to receive and display message information in a wireless system, a paging receiver, a radio (wireless) data terminal and the like equipped with a so-called "selective paging receiving function" have been known which receive the above-described message information only when selective paging information transmitted prior to the message information is given to the owner apparatus.
There are two typical requirements for the current portable radio apparatuses such as paging receivers. As the first requirement, the portabilities must be improved by making the radio apparatus compact, slim and light in weight. For instance, pen type paging receivers, card type paging receivers and watch type paging receivers are commercially available. As the second requirement, the radio apparatus must be multi-functional. For example, in the commercially available paging receiver, a plurality of message information such as "URGENTLY CALL BACK TO FIRM" have been stored in this paging receiver, and a stereotyped message information display function is provided with this paging receiver, so that upon receipt of a predetermined code signal as the message information, the message information corresponding to this code signal is reproduced and displayed. Also, a plurality of data such as names and telephone numbers have been stored in the commercially available paging receiver, and the data are displayed upon request, namely the telephone directory function. Furthermore, there is another type of paging receiver having such a function capable of receiving and representing information such as stock prices and gold prices which are supplied from an information supplier by utilizing the radio message paging system.
In such radio multifunctional apparatuses, it is preferable that either the stereotyped message data, or the telephone directory data may be simply registered into a built-in type memory; a single message line of the received message data may be entirely displayed within one display time; and a plurality of reception messages may be subdivided in accordance with the sort of messages so as to be stored or edited and also be effectively and readily displayed.
However, to satisfy such conventional requirements, both a keyboard capable of easily inputting the numeral data and the character data as the data input means, and a large-screen-sized display device must be employed, so that the above-described first requirement, namely compactness, slim and light weight cannot be satisfied.
As one conventional method for entirely displaying all of the message information received by the portable radio apparatus, it has been proposed that the portable radio apparatus is coupled to another electronic device having a large-screen-sized display device, and the message information is displayed on this display device. For instance, Japanese Laid-open (KOKAI) Patent Application No. 64-8492 (opened on Jan. 12, 1989) discloses that the radio paging receiver having only a function to store received data and no display device is made as the same size as the IC card, this radio paging receiver is loaded on the IC card loading unit of the wordprocessor, instead of the IC card, and then the reception information stored in the memory employed in the radio paging receiver is displayed on the display device of the wordprocessor by way of the key operation effected at the wordprocessor.
Moreover, in this conventional paging system, the radio paging receiver is capable of only storing the received data, and has no means for announcing the contents of the received data to the operator, e.g., no display device and an audio speaker. As a consequence, upon receipt of the message information, not only the radio paging receiver but also the wordprocessor must be always carried by the operator who wishes to immediately confirm the contents of the received message information.